Eric Harris left records documenting his admiration for Hitler, Hobbes, and Nietzsche. He also may have admired Charles Manson. This article explores parallels between the ideas of these men and those of Harris in an attempt to trace possible influences on his thinking.

This article appeared in the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior (published by Elsevier) and is reprinted with their permission. The article provides a brief overview of the scholarly literature on school shooters, followed by a presentation of my typology.

This article first demonstrates multiple types of problematic reporting, showing that many statements made about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold cannot be taken at face value. The article then seeks to present a more accurate picture of Harris and Klebold based primarily on the thousands of pages of Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) documents.

Information

11,000 Page Report

These two documents were found online, compiled by an unknown researcher. I have attempted to obtain permission from the researcher to post this material, but have been unsuccessful. I am posting the documents here to preserve this meticulous work. These two documents provide a page-by-page listing of the contents of the first 11,000 pages of JCSO documents.

This diagram portrays the apparent lines of influence from Columbine through subsequent attacks. All of the post-Columbine perpetrators included here either explicitly cited Columbine as an influence or made oral or written references that suggest it influenced their own attacks. The lines of influence illustrate links between those who were influenced by Columbine and later perpetrators whom they influenced in turn. The New York Times described an earlier version of this document: “Langman has created a mass-shooter diagram tracking the influence Columbine has had on more than 30 other rampage attacks at schools and elsewhere, from California to Germany. The diagram resembles a corporate flowchart, with lines branching out and intersecting, but all of them flowing out of two names: the Columbine killers.” This document may be downloaded as a large-scale poster or in smaller tabloid format. This is a companion document to “Role Models, Contagions, and Copycats: An Exploration of the Influence of Prior Killers on Subsequent Attacks.”

This document is an index to thousands of pages of documents compiled by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) related to the attack at Columbine High School. This is a guide to summaries of hundreds of interviews organized first by the first name of the interviewee and then by the last name of the interviewee. The original document was found online with no indication of who created it. It has been redesigned for this site.

The attack at Columbine generated over 27,000 pages of documents for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO), most of which have been made public. These include reports from thousands of interviews with people who knew Harris and Klebold, as well as the killers' personal journals, school planners, academic assignments, yearbook inscriptions, and more. I have organized an index to assist people in locating references by theme. For example, there are pages listing references to Harris and Klebold being harassed, as well as references to Harris and Klebold not being harassed, and references to Harris and Klebold harassing others. There are 10 categories divided into additional subcategories.

Original documents

Though Klebold drank alcohol and smoked marijuana, the autopsy noted no trace of drugs or alcohol; thus, he was not under the influence at the time of the attack. The report also documents the clothing he wore, including a black t-shirt with the word “Wrath” on it, as well as a “red star medallion containing a sickle and a hammer” on his left boot—a symbol used in Communist Russia.

After Klebold was arrested on January 30, 1998, he participated in a diversion program to keep young, first-time offenders out of the legal system. This document contains his intake paperwork, questionnaires, notes of probation meetings, and assorted forms.

This is a collection of pages from several Jefferson County Sheriff's Office (JCSO) documents, including the 1997 and 1998 pre-attack records, as well as the massive collection of post-attack materials. There is some redundancy in these sources, but I have chosen to include different versions of the same content rather than choose one version over another. Note: immediately after the attack, someone posted a fake webpage claiming to be Eric Harris. As far as I know, any online content that is not included in the JCSO material is fraudulent.

Despite Harris’s use of marijuana and alcohol, the autopsy revealed no substances in his system other than fluvoxamine (Luvox), a prescription medication he had been taking for approximately a year. The report also notes that he wore a shirt that read “Natural Selection.” Finally, Harris had a medical condition called pectus excavatum, which means he had a sunken chest. He had surgery at ages 12 and 13 to repair this. Despite the surgery, the autopsy notes that the pectus excavatum was still observable.

After Harris was arrested on January 30, 1998, he participated in a diversion program to keep young, first-time offenders out of the legal system. This document contains his intake paperwork, questionnaires, notes of probation meetings, and assorted forms.

In 1998, after the Brown family notified the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) of Eric Harris’s webpages where he documented his bomb-making activity as well as expressed his homicidal urges, an affidavit was written requesting a search warrant to allow law enforcement to search the Harris residence. For some reason, there was no follow through and the search never occurred.

JCSO Columbine Documents

Following the attack at Columbine, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office (JCSO) took charge of investigating the incident and accumulated approximately 27,000 pages of documents. Most of these have been released to the public and are available below, but there are some gaps in the sequence of documents. These and other materials (such as videos by Harris and Klebold) can be purchased from JCSO. Note: This massive document has been broken into several approximately 1000-page segments, each of which may be downloaded individually. Each segment is about 20 Mb.

This was written several weeks before the attack at Columbine. Dylan’s English teacher was concerned about the content and addressed this with him, his parents, and a guidance counselor, but Dylan argued that it was just a piece of fiction. The narrator in the story recounts witnessing a man kill multiple students. The killer is described as 6’4”, left-handed, and wearing a black trenchcoat. Dylan himself was approximately 6’4”, left-handed, and wore a black trench coat.

This document is a collection of quotes from Harris's writings, organized by theme. The themes include his preoccupation with being original and beyond all influence, his grandiose (at times god-like) self-image, his fascination with natural selection and destroying humanity, and more.

In the weeks leading up to the attack at Columbine High School, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold filmed themselves talking about their violent intentions. The videos have been shown to a few people, but never released to the public. This description of them, along with some quoted passages, was compiled and posted online. It has been reformatted for this site.

Official reports

This is the final report from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office regarding the attack at Columbine High School. (Note: The report was published as a website. This is a PDF version of the entire site. As of October 2014, the original site no longer seems to be accessible. We have added bookmarks to this document; we recommend downloading it and using the bookmarks pane in your PDF viewer to navigate. Most of the audio and video links are still functional; clicking on a link will download the audio or video media to your computer.)

As stated in this document, “This report is an analysis of the fire service and emergency medical service (EMS) operations and the overall response to the assault on Columbine High School at Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999. Incident command, special operations, and mass casualty emergency medical services are featured.” The report was produced by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.